Chapter Seven
“One good thing about entertaining magic users,” said Cousin Delia to Sephie that evening, “is that they can translocate home after dinner, so one does not have to consider bedchambers and breakfasts.”
They had met on the main stairs, both of them dressed in formal evening gowns.
In Sephie’s case, that meant her one and only suitable dress, though after she had received the message sent with a maid to tell her that some of the guests who had been at today’s meeting would be staying on for the meal, she had unearthed the better shawl she kept for such occasions and the pearls her father had sent her for her twenty-first birthday.
She did not yet know who was staying. Was she about to meet the prince regent? The prime minister?
But apparently not. Those two august gentlemen had left for other engagements, as had some of the others from the meeting.
But the Duke of Findlater, the Dean of the London College of Mages, a general from the War Department, and several other senior government functionaries had all remained to share the Baradines’ table.
Sephie had little to say. She was overawed by the company—all titled, all with powerful mage gifts, all older, more experienced, and wiser than her.
She was uninformed, too, about the topics they discussed.
It was mostly gossip about others in their circle, which was boring to Sephie, who knew neither the people nor the events mentioned.
The most interesting subject was the imminent birth of the son of Emperor Napoleon by his new wife, the Austrian princess.
Sephie had heard about his marriage, but not that the empress was with child.
As she was wondering how the most notorious battle mage in Europe had managed to sire a son—something the use of magic should have precluded—several at the dinner table began to speculate whether the British army’s recent successes in Spain and Portugal had been made easier by Napoleon’s abstinence from magic so he could conceive his heir.
They were quickly shushed by the dean, Lady Hardcastle, who pointed out there was a maiden at the table, and they began instead to wonder how a prince in France’s royal household would change the shape of the war.
Sephie wondered if they really thought she was that ignorant, but she made no comment.
Over six courses, as the footmen kept the wine glasses full, more mentions of the political affairs that brought them together crept into the conversation.
The references were elusive, so she was left puzzling about their meaning, even after either her Uncle Findlater or Cousin Jasper swiftly changed the subject, and everyone would glance at her, the only interloper at the table.
Any resentment she might have felt was tempered by the knowledge they were right to treat her as a spy.
After all, she was one. And enough of thoughts like that!
The dragon lord’s power was beyond anything she had ever seen, and while she didn’t think he could read her mind, he’d shown himself perceptive enough to read her face.
Perhaps she was being oversensitive about the guests’ opinion, in any case, for the glances were also directed at the footmen who attended the company. They were being cautious, or at least her cousin and uncle were being cautious. Some of the guests, less so.
The weavers and their protests occupied part of the conversation.
The protesters claimed to follow a man called Ned Ludd who broke machines in the textile mills.
Enough was said for Sephie to know that those around the table were divided on the topic.
Some saw the protesters as the seeds of a revolution such as that which had swept France.
Others—Sephie’s cousins among them—felt that the textile manufacturers were ignoring legitimate complaints about their practices.
The one topic they didn’t touch on was the curse of madness on the king. It struck Sephie as odd. She remembered how intensely interested her neighbors in Shropshire had been in the king’s condition, what had caused it, and what the outcome would be.
Yet these people avoided the subject entirely, even though they probably knew his majesty, and certainly knew the Prince of Wales, who was now the prince regent.
They did not linger after dinner. The dean declared she had a busy schedule the next day and would take her leave, and the rest of the company took her lead.
Sephie went up to her bedchamber, accepted the maid’s help to wash and change for bed, and sent the girl away.
As the door closed behind the maid, she finally let herself think about what she had learned.
Not a great deal, but she sat and wrote it out in a note for the Hawk, recording the friction between two sides over Ned Ludd’s followers, the discussion about Napoleon and his expected child, the silence over the king’s curse.
The note written, folded, and sealed, she climbed into bed, blew out the last of the candles, and composed herself for sleep. Her last thought before she drifted off was about Mr. Barberry’s spy flowers.
I placed them. I managed to put the spy flowers into the vases. It was an accomplishment, and if she felt somewhat uncomfortable about spying on her cousins, her pleasure in being useful to someone was pure and unalloyed. Mr. Barberry will be proud of me.
*
Delia liked to join the children for breakfast, and Jasper came with her whenever he could spare time from his duties. On the morning after the emergency meeting over the king’s curse, they arrived in the nursery to discover the nursemaids frantically searching.
Polly rushed to Delia, grasped both her hands, and begged, “Tell me Miss Mary came to you, my lady.”
“No,” Delia said, her heart beating faster with alarm. “Is Mary missing?”
Polly burst into tears, and her sobs greatly impeded Delia’s ability to understand what she was saying.
Jasper took over, pointing to one of the other nursemaids and telling her to explain.
“Miss Mary was being naughty, my lord, wriggling and such when Nanny Polly was trying to change her. She knocked over the clout bucket with her tail and Nanny Polly growled. She hid under the bed, my lady. You know how she does. We left her to calm down, and when her nanny looked for her, she was gone. We have searched the nursery, and we cannot find her.”
“Was the door open?” Jasper asked.
“I don’t think so, my lord,” said the nursemaid, but another of the girl’s spoke up.
“It was, my lord. Just for a moment. The footmen brought the bath water and firewood, and they put down their loads with the door open. Then they left, shutting the door behind them.”
Delia and Jasper exchanged glances. “It would only take Mary a moment,” he said, and Delia nodded. They both knew how fast the little girl could move on her long snake body.
“We shall find her,” Jasper said, as much to his worried wife as to the sobbing nursemaid.
“Lady Baradine, come and help me search for a mage trace. Polly, stop crying, wash your face, and then you can help search this floor. I shall send some footmen to help you. Elizabeth and Alfred, Papa and Mama need to go and find Mary.”
Delia gathered all of the calm she could and spoke to the children, giving the maids direction at the same time. “Let your maids give you breakfast, my darlings. Papa and I shall see you shortly, once we have found Mary.”
It was hard to tell how much their adopted children understood.
All of them were ahead of their typical human contemporaries in both the animal and the human parts of their physical bodies, and—or so Delia thought—in their mental acuity, too.
The two younger ones had not yet started to speak, but Mary, the eldest, had a vocabulary of at least 50 words, including Mama, Papa, and Polly.
And she certainly knew she was not to leave the nursery without Polly or another of the maids.
Whether the younger two understood what Delia said or not, they picked up the cue of the maids moving to fetch their porridge, and lost interest in anything except breakfast.
Mary’s mage trace was faint. Indiscernible, in fact, to Jasper’s mage sense, but Delia was able to see magic use and the trace it left behind.
Since Mary’s existence was sustained by magic, Delia was very familiar with the blue glow that constantly surrounded her.
In the dark of the passage, the blue stain the little girl had left in passing was a trail for Delia to follow.
“She headed for the stairs. Yes—there, and there.” Delia pointed at the marks, though Jasper just shook his head. He couldn’t see them, but he followed her down four flights of stairs to the ground floor, and then across the grand entrance hall and through the doors that led to the reception rooms.
“Your study,” Delia said. “But how could she get in there? It is locked and has protection spells on it.”
Jasper made a couple of quick gestures, and then reached for the door’s handle. “If she is in there, we shall find out how she managed to get in, but for now, let’s check the room.” He opened the door.
Mary was in plain view as soon as Delia walked into the study. She was balanced on the lower half of her body, the human toddler part of her four feet from the ground. She had her arms against a vase on a tall pedestal, and as Delia and Jasper entered, she succeeded in pushing it to the floor.
“Mary!” scolded Delia.
The child froze in place for a moment, examining her parents with a frown. Then she lowered enough of her body to be able to propel herself toward Delia. “Mama,” she said, as she threw herself into Delia’s arms, adding, “Papa,” with a smirk as she shot a sideways glance at Jasper.
“Mary,” said Delia sternly, “it was very naughty to break into Papa’s study. What were you thinking?”
“And how did you manage it?” Jasper wondered. “I sincerely hope the child has not figured out how to translocate!”
It was not translocation. The trail had gone under the door, as far as Delia could tell. But what it was, Delia had no idea. “The maids will need to keep constant watch over her until we find out what happened,” Delia said. “Mary, go to Papa. Mama cannot lift you now that you are so big.”
But when the little girl let go of Delia, she headed for the flowers she had just strewn across the floor, which lay amidst a clutter of sharp shards from the broken vase.
“Stop, Mary,” said Delia sharply. “Ouchie!” It was the nursery word for pain that adventurous Mary had already had reason to learn.
“Ouchie,” repeated Mary, holding up a flower that glowed golden, though the flower itself was a pink rose. What was a spelled bloom doing in Jasper’s inner sanctum? Had he set it there himself for some reason? He certainly hadn’t mentioned it to Delia.
Jasper held out a hand. “Give to Papa.”
“Ouchie, Papa,” Mary repeated, handing him the bloom, and turning back to the mess on the floor. “More ouchie.”
Bending to look, Jasper came up with another flower that emitted the same golden glow. “How did these get in here?” he asked. Delia’s eyes widened. If Jasper didn’t know about the flowers, then their presence suddenly took on a more sinister implication.
Mary turned to the remnants of the other vase, and Delia put out a hand to grasp her arm. “Let Papa look,” she said. “Jasper, they glow gold to my eyes.”
“And to my mage sense,” Jasper said. “I can hear them, too, now that I know they’re there, though the sound is so faint I missed it before.” He was sorting through the second lot of flowers and greenery as he spoke, and now he straightened with two more faintly glowing roses in his hand.
“Well, Mary-mine,” he said to their daughter, “is that all of them? And how did you know they were there?”
“You think she came to the study on purpose to find them?” Delia asked.
“It is hard to avoid that conclusion,” Jasper said.
“Our Mary is adventurous and mischievous, but not often naughty—and she has never escaped downstairs before. Something brought her to the study. Mary, my love, I wish you could tell us how you knew something was wrong. And how you got in here! No one should be able to even open that door except me and your Mama. It is keyed to our mage prints.”
“Mama,” said Mary, and she flowed to the door and stared at the handle and then at her hand. Before Delia’s astonished eyes, the gentle violet glow that usually surrounded her daughter was replaced, though only on the hand, by the mint green shot with gold that was the signature of Delia’s magic.
Mary grasped the handle and tugged it downward. “Mama,” she repeated.
“Blessed King Arthur,” said Jasper. “Mary can counterfeit a mage print. That’s how she got in.”
They stared at the child for a moment, and then Jasper shook himself, as if throwing off the thoughts that froze him in place. Probably he was thinking of all the trouble an infant with such a gift could cause herself and others. Certain that was what preoccupied Delia.
“As to why,” she said after a moment, “do you remember the hexed well at the castle? Mary was only a baby, but she could detect the hex in the water. I wonder if she noticed something wrong when I brought the children to the study last night for their goodnight kisses?”
“Ouchie flower,” said Mary.
“Dearest,” Jasper said, “Will you take Mary up to breakfast and question Polly and the others about what might have been different about our daughter this morning? I am going to box these flowers up and put a spell on them to stop them from seeing or hearing anything, then start an enquiry into how they came to be here. I assume either you or the housekeeper did the vases for this room the day before yesterday?”
“The housekeeper, I should think,” Delia said. “But Jasper, I have not been helping her. Persephone has been kind enough to take over that task.”